Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This essay explores the Christian community as a space of transformative encounter with human vulnerability, from which pastoral care emerges. The starting point of the analysis is Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece, understood as a symbolic representation of God’s solidarity with the suffering in Christ. The article argues that the Christian community is not merely a doctrinal construct but an embodied practice rooted in memory, ritual, and care. It revisits sociological concepts of community, particularly through Ferdinand Tonnies and Jean-Luc Nancy, to critique idealized or totalizing visions of unity, and instead proposes a fragile, open, and spiritually dynamic form of being-with. The task of Christian communities is to embrace their fragmentary and unfinished nature and to become mediators of care, reconciliation, and hopeful encounter in a fragmented world.
Source: TEOLOGICKÁ REFLEXE
Author: Ralph Kunz
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410966475